Main Curriculum Focus
Health/Science
Context
There were 23 students in this split age Year 4/5 classroom with a young teacher in her 2nd year of teaching. The classroom learning environment was well established and students were energetic and eager to learn.
What We Did
Our project entitled Art of Wellbeing explored student, peer, staff and family sense of self, identity, mental healthiness and the wonder that is our incredible body and mind. Through a series of sessions students identified what made them tick, their hearts’ sing and how to notice signs of stress and challenge. The students and adults alike explored ways to address the body and mind’s reaction to stress, worry and quite frankly anything ‘new’ or unknown. The students worked individually, in pairs and then larger groups to explore themselves as social an emotional beings.
The ultimate aim was for students to produce and create a sensory experience that will be unveiled at a student lead and created a Wellbeing Expo at the end of the project in Term 4. Term 3 focused upon the students’ personal/collective wellbeing before they then consider how they can help/encourage others to maintain a healthy state of wellbeing.
How did we make the curriculum come alive?
We have asked the students to look around them this term and see how mathematics forms a part of their environment; whether that’s designing a flag, playing angles bingo, exploring urban design, or looking for the angles in the cracks in the pavement. We have asked them to respond, create and reflect on a variety of challenges using a range of creative approaches, visual, textual, and technological, to deepen their own understanding of this curriculum area.
How did we make the Creative Habits of Learning come alive?
In our sessions we have focused on three of the 5 Habits of Learning - collaborative, persistent and disciplined. Our warm-up games and activities were designed to give students opportunities to experience these habits in shared, meaningful, and reflective ways: from classic playground games of an egg & spoon race or tunnel ball to designing measuring courses for other teams to complete. Our approaches have enabled students to actively engage with these habits of learning each session to develop a deeper understanding and experience of them.
How did we activate student voice and learner agency?
We engage different forms of leadership and encouraged discussion of roles within a team. One of the highlights was to discuss and reflect on how all roles are vital to the completion of tasks and activities. We encourage students to embody their roles and amplify their voices. We gave students more discussion time to explore and develop their ideas. We set up tasks and activities this term with time included for groups to process, discuss, negotiate, and prototype in order to hear other’s perspectives and deepen understanding on a topic. We wanted the students to be captivated so we made sessions stimulating and relevant to the development of agency.
Intended Outcomes
Students worked to map out their own mental healthiness tool kit.
Students developed and strengthen their empathy for others and their understanding and appreciation of individual differences.
Understanding and delivery of the design process.
How did we make the curriculum come alive?
By presenting a broad range of fun, hands-on and explorative workshop sessions that lead to follow up discussions that linked back to dealing with personal wellbeing and robust mental health.
Workshops included:
Drawing with new eyes – turning everyday objects into something else.
Being open to:
- new opportunities
- different points of view
- having a different outlook to others can be seized for creativity
- realising that people will see things through their own lens
5 Habits Sculptures reimagined
Using Lego, magazines, natural materials, construction sticks student groups created a sculpture to represent their Creative Habit of Learning.
Instruction and confusion game
Easily mis-read instructions that created a little uncertainty – with opportunities to share how that felt, what stress is like, with follow up discussions about how students felt with it and how they could in the future to limited anxiety or stress if in similar situation. Discovering that its ok to be wrong, not understand, fail, make mistake as long as you have the mind set to find out more, persevere, learn from mistakes and see error as part of the creativity process. No mistake – no new ideas.
Create your own Country of Creatures
Working as a group to create a country with a set of values and process of leadership, Creating tribes of creatures that care for one another, with similarity yet differences within the same values system.
Heart Brain Connection
Testing pulse rates in different situations - after physical excursion, after timed competitive games, after drawing zen tangles, after guided meditation session, after to listening to different types of music rock, jazz, classical.
Using Likert scales to rate how they felt personally/emotionally in these different states and hearing how some students love the competitive stress yet others don’t.
Skills Sessions
Learning new skills:
– paper cutting and paper manipulation following very specific instructions and safety concerns then using this to branch out into own ideas and creations.
Colour
How colour evokes different feelings for different people. Not everyone has the same favourite colour - why?
Using natural plants and organic matter to create inks and pigments.
Testing the inks, seeing how under different circumstances the colours can change state. Comparison to us personally -we like one set of things, colours, environments, settings as favourites but we can’t always control this – how to deal with it, seize and make it work for us.
Our key Curriculum Areas focused upon:
Health and Science
Communicating & interacting for health & wellbeing
Living Things
Technology
Designing
Producing and Implementing
Literacy
Oral & Visual Language
Language for social interaction
Our class sessions built upon a series of workshops that investigated ‘what makes me tick. Building a personal journal that documents the process. Creation of a person tool kits for maintaining physical and mental healthiness. Design and delivery of a sensory experience in an expo like setting that explores how people can manage their mental healthiness.
How did we make the Creative Habits of Learning come alive?
The 5 Learning Habits wheel was presented alongside an owl drawing as a metaphor to illustrate the Habits and discuss what they mean in action. We looked back over the term at all previous activities and at which of the Learning Habits we had identified each week as our main selection. Most warm, up sessions included a quick group interpretation of a Habit be it a body sculpture to represent resilience, a mimed tableau of cooperation, 5 min Lego sculptures depicting discipline. Students compared differences and their own patterns and habits personally recorded each week. We asked - “are there any habits you seem to easily use each time?” “Are there habits you seem to avoid or use less often - why?” We have been visually representing these habits by using the ‘habit sticks’ – which have engraved habit names on them – as well as the habit pegs that delve deeper into each habit. We touched base on these at the end of most sessions so that students could represent the main two habits used each session.
How did we activate student voice and learner agency?
The students had had little exposure to the 5 habits language previously with only one or two students being involved with the program last year. However the class quickly picked up the language and were able to articulate their own interpretations of each. While elements of the creative mini projects presented each week had a clear agenda and focus - individuals and groups were given the freedom to select specific areas of personal appeal which stimulated self-generated intrinsic motivation. Student voice and learner agency was supported through groups discussion and decision making, journaling and our reflective sessions with the 5 Habit sticks. Students talked about; what learning is, what learning looks like, what was difficult and what they had enjoyed of the process.
What was the impact?
By week 3 students stopped asking ‘how do I do this’ realising the way they tackled it was valued as long as they had thought behind it. Fewer students backed away and started sessions with ‘I can’t do this,’ ‘I don’t get it,’ ‘is this being marked.’ The final “is this being marked” always brings a wry smile to my face as in many ways the students’ final creations/products/decisions are much more exposed in group settings and discussions than much of the work that they stress about that could possibly expose their weaknesses as learners. I feel that they moved onto the space of feeling comfortable in the discomfort of trying new things, making mistakes as part of the growth process and generally loving the learning cycle of think, try, test, reflect and improve. I’m finding that the teacher is quietly noting different reactions from certain students and she also seems genuinely intrigued with the different approach to classroom learning and more importantly the permission for the class to dive deeply into this style of learning.
Term 4
The Well-Being Expo was launched one afternoon on the final day of the program. The Expo was held at the school where parents and the entire school community were invited. Student created stalls and experiences that promoted wellbeing which were dotted outside amongst the trees. This launch included the Taming Monster Project exhibition where student wrote design briefs on tricky emotion monster e.g. stressed out squid and the boulder of anxiety. The students then researched and wrote to local artists with their design briefs. All artists sent back incredible artworks, detailed responses to student letters and personal accounts about how they dealt with tricky emotions and feelings. The success of the Well-Being Expo was the strength of student agency in the development and delivery of almost every aspect of the event. We had overwhelmingly positive feedback from all who attended and the teacher spoke of the depth of discussion and reflection from her class post event.
“It is sometimes hard, because we have to do a hard challenge. It is helping us with communication and teamwork and collaboration. It feels tricky, but we always like to keep going.” (Student)
“We are getting better at the creative skills. Before when we were doing group work, we didn't really listen to each other, particularly boys and girls. Now we are better at it, and we all get on together.” (Student)
“It is going great. I am loving it. I love watching them. It is so good to see it. I think they are getting an opportunity to access the curriculum in a way they wouldn't normally do. The kids who are not normally accessing the curriculum thrive. They are immersing themselves in this and that is so nice to see. I love the Universal Design for Learning approach, and we'd love to implement it a bit more, but time always gets in the way. (Teacher)
"We have chosen a health and well-being focus as our curriculum focus. I love seeing some kids who have struggled with it at first, and the thinking that's going on for them. Thinking on the spot was difficult for some. They panicked and shut down at first. I just left them to go through the struggle themselves. They now feel more comfortable with that struggle. With this class, I found at the beginning of the year that they had to have help then and there. I found it so difficult to start with. If the culture of not helping started when they were really young, then they wouldn't need that much help now. There was so much I want to do differently in my class now. There is a lot more talking, real talk in the class, when Anne [Creative Practitioner] is here. It is more noisy, but it is good noise. I am now noticing it is good to have more open discussion in the classroom and more trial and error. I like it and I am trying to bring it into my other lessons now, like in maths and writing. I want to embed the Habits of Learning more in my classroom: discipline, collaboration, persistence, etc. These skills are all so important. Just look at the creativity in the students’ work. They are all unique.” (Teacher)
“We are trying to get more ways of representing Universal Design for Learning in the learning and bringing it into our classrooms. We are bringing more discussion into Maths. This is brilliant for our teachers.” (Principal, Adriano Truscott)
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